Last Wednesday, I attended the Rose Cafe about the facilities staff on West Campus. My biggest takeaway from the talk was something that was first brought to my attention during the the first Rose Cafe of last semester: the importance of maintenance requests. I have come to realize in this past year that I never really understood the true purpose of maintenance requests. When I first learned about them at the beginning of freshman year, they were portrayed to me as something you submit if something in your room–such as a piece of furniture–is broken. I was also told that they were for raising/lowering beds as well. So, while I might have submitted a maintenance request for a broken toilet, I would have never even considered submitting one for an empty soap dispenser or a messy bathroom. My friends behaved in the exact same way. Last year living in South Baker, we frequently complained to each other about the state of our bathroom, yet none of us ever though to submit a maintenance request about our complaints. It wasn’t that we were unwilling to do so; it was that we didn’t even know that such a thing was an option. We thought that the state of our bathroom was just part of living on West Campus, and we simply had to deal with it. So the realization that the facilities staff welcomes our input through the use of maintenance requests was truly welcoming. My only wish now is that more students could become aware of this option, as I believe that very few know of it.